The 45-year-old former Justice and Anti-Corruption party candidate gave evidence yesterday on the fourth day of his trial at Portsmouth Crown Court.

Former Portsmouth South MP Mike Hancock

Packer, of Balliol Road, Buckland, is accused of five counts of possessing extreme pornography and 13 of possessing indecent images of children, alleged to show children as young as five.

Giving evidence, Packer said he got the Pascoe report – written by Nigel Pascoe QC about Mr Hancock’s alleged inappropriate behaviour – through his door in a brown envelope.

He said he then scanned it and put it on his website and the file-sharing system Shareaza on January 18 last year. He said he named it ‘Explosive Hidden Hancock File’ and put it with pornography so people would download it.

Packer said: ‘I expected that something, either some people, saying they were the police, would come round and have a chat with me, or maybe they would come round and threaten me.’

As it happened in the past people had criticised Mike Hancock, people have been visited, cars have been blown up and people have been threatened

Jason Packer

He added: ‘As it happened in the past people had criticised Mike Hancock, people have been visited, cars have been blown up and people have been threatened. I believe three of our justice group have had their cars blown up.’

Packer told the jury he was a member of a justice group, which included the internet group Anonymous, and it hunted paedophiles and corruption – including in the judiciary.

He said he has no knowledge of how the images and movies got on to his Asus tower computer or four USB sticks and said they were planted.

It is the prosecution’s case that Packer downloaded the images using Shareaza on to a hard drive and copied some images on to the sticks.

Asked how he explains the images got on to his machine, Packer said: ‘I can’t say when they were put in. I have to assume they were put in by agents of Mike Hancock at some point, or by the police.’

He added: ‘My initial reaction was magic but that’s not a fair thing to say.